I've had a good writing day. I've actually managed to cross the 15,000 mark!If I continue like this, I might just make it.My favourite scene of the day: the protagonist, lacking a first-aid kit, has to ask the person he most dislikes to bandage his hand.It might sound strange, but it was so much fun.

That actually sounds really awesome! One of the dares I got was to pretend to be friends with the enemy. I had my character seduce him as revenge for him being a total crasshole. Then once he got turned on, she told him what a horrible kisser (she was lying) he was and that he's probably a bad lay and then she walked away. It was such a fun scene to do.

That actually sounds really awesome! One of the dares I got was to pretend to be friends with the enemy. I had my character seduce him as revenge for him being a total crasshole. Then once he got turned on, she told him what a horrible kisser (she was lying) he was and that he's probably a bad lay and then she walked away. It was such a fun scene to do.

Bahaha! It's amazing what can happen when you take the plot in a surprising new direction.I even got a kick out of describing a hospital waiting area, of all places.Bonus fun: Giving my main character déjà vu in the creepiest of situations. He will either think he's onto something pretty dangerous or going insane / having a brain tumor or something. Ah, I love my story.

What percentage of your scenes are you happy with? I get so unmotivated after I write a bad scene. I'm not happy with what I wrote today. When I love a scene, I read it over and over again because I had written something that I would love to read in a book myself. I didn't even want to reread what I wrote today and it was painful to do so. That's no good. I hate these scenes that I can't do anything with.

What percentage of your scenes are you happy with? I get so unmotivated after I write a bad scene. I'm not happy with what I wrote today. When I love a scene, I read it over and over again because I had written something that I would love to read in a book myself. I didn't even want to reread what I wrote today and it was painful to do so. That's no good. I hate these scenes that I can't do anything with.

Oh, I know. I wish there was a workshop for writing dialogues. So far, most of my dialogues suck. That will be the worst part of the editing process. But I can't just evade direct speech all the time. *sigh*

I'm happy with a small percentage of the scenes I've written thus far. I have 110 printed pages now and there's maybe three scenes I like, but that doesn't even mean they'll be kept in the final analysis. I've been to many writing seminars and one of the (very true) pieces of wisdom I got is "you have to kill your babies sometimes" meaning, sometimes you even have to cut those scenes you love the most if it's not working with the rest of your stuff. But that's more the kind of thing to worry about in later editing stages, when you're pulling it all together.

I know from poetry, which I've written for years, that, say, out of every ten poetry drafts I write, maybe three of the ten actually get developed to completion and of those three, maybe one gets completed to my satisfaction (always with some sort of reservation, nothing is ever absolutely "perfect") and of those one-in-tens that get completed, a small percentage of those are actually fit for me to consider sending for publication.

I was watching a special with Debbie Gibson (you know, the Electric Youth songwriter) but she said "for every one hundred songs she writes, only one may ever get recorded," sort of thing.

So, you're not alone at all! Writing seems to be about 90% throwaway from the first draft. As you work it and edit it over time, it gets tighter and tighter and the percentage keeps dropping until you've polished it enough so you're willing to keep 100% of what you've written. Then it's finished. That's been my experience. <3

Oh, I know. I wish there was a workshop for writing dialogues. So far, most of my dialogues suck. That will be the worst part of the editing process. But I can't just evade direct speech all the time. *sigh*

One of my writing teachers gave me a good dialogue exercise--he had me write a short story (it can be really short, like 500 words) using 100% dialogue with no narrative at all. Just forces you to make dialogue serve the story by driving it entirely, having nothing else to work with. I mean, I think dialogue is always sort of problematic for most writers, but the exercise did drive the point home of how to use it to further your story.

The day before yesterday I actually made myself laugh out loud while writing - or one of my characters did, anyway, since it almost felt as if I didn't have any part in it. There's this ageing hippie type, and she's paying my main character, who is currently on sick leave (or so she surmises), a visit. She enters his living room and without asking opens the curtains "to let the sunshine in". That line happened automatically and made me laugh even while I was typing it. Yesterday I told one of my Writing Buddies, and she loved it. So I hope that some scenes are actually enjoyable.

woot! Finished my writing for today. Now just starting to think of the end now and how to start wrapping this up because I feel like I could go on forever with this if I let myself (which bodes well for sequels?). Now, I'm trying to get in a scene or character/interaction to represent all of the important things I still want in the book that I haven't covered yet then by the 25th of the month, start laying the groundwork for the finale.

I think dialogue can be difficult for people, because you have to come up with distinct personalities for your characters, where it could even be possible to tell who is talking without telling people. I created a character and none of his dialogue worked, so I ended up deleting the whole scene and just took the blow to my word count. I kept him as a character, but had people talking about his personality instead of showing it by having him speak. It think it did an equal job of getting the job done. I have another character whose personality I didn't want to bother with, who is in most of the book, yet isn't in any scenes (one where he's silent and waves and is flirting with a guy, but we don't hear what he's saying). I have him saying only a few lines on the phone in another scene. All the other times, it's just characters mentioning him. He's a well-enough developed character just by doing that too.

Congrats, Seitanicverses for your progress so far!

Phoenix, I've had that happen too where a character just says the perfect thing and it was zero effort on my part!

I was feeling discouraged this morning, because of the crepe that I wrote yesterday. Then today, three scenes somehow popped into my head, and I was excited about writing all of them. I wrote 4,211 words today, which is my most ever! Hopefully scenes will keep coming to me. I actually like everything I wrote! I really love one of them a lot, because it's unexpected and something that readers will read quickly to find out what happens.

That's awesome, bastah!I hope that will happen to me too. I need a LOT of words if I ever want to catch up.But you can clearly see on my chart when things at the office got less stressful.And you now what? I learn a lot of interesting things whenever I have to look something up on the internet. Thanks, NaNo.

I think dialogue can be difficult for people, because you have to come up with distinct personalities for your characters, where it could even be possible to tell who is talking without telling people.

This is so true! I think I got bored in the second week of NaNo partly because I spent too much time putting my characters in the exact same situtation to see how they'd "react" and what dialogue I could come up with for them that was distinctive to them, because I felt the need to start distinguishing them because I was starting to feel my characters were all the same person.

Yeah, I actually plan on writing between a 300-400 page book ultimately (whatever that comes out to Kcount wise) because I feel ripped off as a consumer by too-short books (unless they're particularly artistic/poetic/densely written or otherwise spectacular in some way) but whatever I come out with at the end of this month is my first "draft" and I will add additional scenes as I develop my characters later. I don't even have a main character yet, or at least they haven't really reappeared in force since week 1 so now I'm questioning who my main character is. I'm just writing about different characters and playing with ideas, seeing what I can invent right now story and character-wise and will worry about the finer details later. I feel like what I've written right is a really long outline that needs a whole lot of focus and fleshing.

I'm not even writing my story this month. I was thinking about just finishing my story and adding 30k words later, but that seems too hard. I have no idea how much I even have left of my story. I needed serious word padding, so since I had mentioned how a character was going crazy (dream guy is forking with him for forking with his lady), I decided to show it too with a home visit. Then after seeing him, she had a dream that was a Full House episode using characters from the story as the actors (obviously super sexy dream guy is uncle Jesse, she's Becky and her boyfriend is... Danny), which tells the story of the guy who is going crazy in a way where there's a moral and where people should be sympathetic. Then there's a play on Ranger Joe which is downright raunchy. I'm so glad I needed these extra words, I guess, because this dream sequence is pretty epic.

Ha! I only wrote one single word today - but it's the name of the third part of my novel! And it's perfect.I thank my secret muse (who might never know unless this book is revised and published one day).

I'm just trying to write some sort of conclusion, but I think what I'm writing now actually has to go much earlier on the book. Oh wells. I'm just going to keep going till the end of the month on the novel then put it away until January and go back to my short stories for December.

If I'm in a position to work on novel #2 next Nov, I already have an idea for next year!

If I'm in a position to work on novel #2 next Nov, I already have an idea for next year!

Me too! Science Fiction with some really strange stuff going on.

Science Fiction again for me too with the next one. As I go on, I don't think I will ever write a literary type novel. My family's surprised by this science fiction thing, they expected me to go literary genre with my writing. But when I think literary, I can't think of anything to write about potentially novel-length (unless it's for a short story, but sci fi's slowly taking over my short story output as well). But once I start thinking science fiction-y, the ideas start rolling fast and furious and I'm excited about them. And that's the bingo! feeling, I guess, of inspiration, so it seems sci-fi's shaping up to be my thing--even though I have very little experience in reading sci fi, but I actually feel that because of that, I may have something different to offer? We'll see.

I have less than 1400 words to go to get to 50k, but I'm having trouble. Since making my 80k goal, I haven't really been able to write. I know I should skip ahead and just write the stuff I have planned, but I feel like that's at least 10k words from now and that if I write it, the story won't flow right since there will be a chunk missing. I'm not sure if my OCD will let me do it.

You can do it! Maybe stop making 80K your goal and just let 50K be your goal because that's an awesome enough thing. <3

Yesterday I just started writing the conclusion even though I've done no building up to it. I just dropped out mid-story and started the finale because I feel a need to have a completion. I'll fill in all those gaping canyon blanks later. I just want a sense of direction for the story so it won't feel "unfinished" in that way when I go back to start focusing and developing it in the future. I can tell you right now that very little of what I wrote this month is going to stand, but this month has not been a waste of time at all for my writing. I think I have the beginning of something with mine and that's all I wanted from this month.

So, I was just in the "What are you reading?" thread in the Living Room and I noticed people recommending "Never Let Me Go" to each other in there so I wiki'd the book to see what it's about and ZOMG, the premise is very similar to the one I've been working on. I had no idea! I even googled books before I started to see what was out there synopsis-wise similar to mine and nothing much came up. Nothing to worry me that my idea wasn't original. I guess I only searched sci-fi books or something. Or maybe it's hard to google book premises and get any accurate reading. I'm quite bummed about this. I mean, my idea diverges on several major points (from the summary I read in wiki) but I'm not sure it's enough. I guess I'll have to borrow this Never Let Me Go book from the library and make sure mine is different enough and if it isn't now I have to make it so. I guess it's a good thing to find out now, before I start any serious work on it...